Zandvoort In A Cooper.

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Posted Jan 10 2012 - 09:33 AM

I think I just reminded myself of why I sometimes leave GPL for a while: the sheer bloody frustration of it when you are trying to go green and you hit a brick wall and cannot go any quicker no matter what you try! I'm stuck in the low 1min 27s at Zandvoort in the Cooper and try as I may I can't get much quicker, lots of perspiration for not much reward on the clock. I've been driving the wheels of the darn thing lately!

Problem is made worse by the fact that I can pretty much drive any setup to get the same times so it's not as if I can hit on a some magic setup and go a second quick. I'm stuck on a plateau! I have done a couple of high 1min 26s but they were more by fluke than anything else, in any case, I have only managed only a handful of such laps and have not been able to replicate it consistently.

Well, im not good at explaining, hope it would make sence...
I cant find you in gplrank... I therefore dont know if you are experienced driver truyng to get negative monster, or decent driver truyng ot get negative. I assume its the second... If i assumed wromg, be more specific next time...

First, get pribluda. It will show you sector times and the whole laptimes, so you can see where you are improving and where - not, also to see what is the bast possible laptime you can get so far.

Second, get replay analyser. Save several replays of your best possible laps. In the replay folder, there are already replays of the benchmark times. Open the benchmark replay and your replay side by side, and then you will be able to compare and see exacly where you are slower. The Speedgraph (in tools) is what i find most useful, because it shows in red where you are slower, and in green where you are faster. You might even find that you are faster everywhere but one place... With zandwoort expecially, I have great trouble with the three fast rights, I need wery stable setup to go fast enough there ...

After that, in replay analyser, click file/merdge all laps to one replay file. Open the replay file in gpl, you will see your lap and benchmark lap merdged, something like ghost cars... try to figure out what he does othervise on the places you are slower.

You can also try to download a world record replay from gplrank, the benchmark lap is not too good...

Why cooper? Not bad car here, but there are faster ones... I find it useful to change my cars often, so i dont get used ot one behaviour.

Get a few days rest from gpl... I often find things much clearer and easier after that...

Keep in mind also, that kyalami and zandvoord are some of the hardest 67 benchmarks...

In addition, I would say as long as you race alone or vs the AIs you will not know where you really are!

I was doing this for 10 years, but after now one year of online racing, my times got way better.
In most of the open races at IGOR or VROC there are also newbies racing who will give you a competition. Racing there will let you make way more progress than comparing data in usefull programs.

Zandy was the track that I needed to go all green and it was my goal to get it accomplished between Christmas and New Years, this year, while I was on vacation. It drove me nuts!!!! I got stuck 0.035 sec above it. I gave it up for a day and drove other tracks. Then on the last night before going back to work, I pulled it off with the same setup I had been using all along.
Sometimes you just have to step away
good Luck..stick with it..it will come

I set the fuel for about 25 minutes of laps, then after about 15 minutes I stop setting Green sectors, before one last push on the lap before I run out of fuel. After 25 minutes I never set another quick lap.

the sheer bloody frustration of it when you are trying to go green and you hit a brick wall and cannot go any quicker no matter what you try! I'm stuck in the low 1min 27s at Zandvoort in the Cooper and try as I may I can't get much quicker

As noted, sometimes it does help to step away from a car for a while.

In my case, after doing 67 cars for a looong while I started in the 65 cars, including doing hotlapping. Although they're slower, they also force you to push really hard to hotlap fast and reach a benchmark time. This also required getting used to "hot" (30/85) style diff settings to 'torque' your way out of a corner earlier. Because in the 65s this is more mellow than in 67s, I slowly got accustomed to them and later was able to apply the added bits of newfound speed to the 67s.

In my case, that led to a new PB in most cars (Cooper 1:25.9). But if you think the Coop is hard to get negative at Zandy, just wait until you try to haul the White Whale (Honda) and that other heavyweight BRM around the dunes - made the Cooper feel like a right old speed demon!

It's all about momentum and line around that track though - it's possible to reach 67 laptimes in the 65s and 66's, important to remember that.

If it can comfort you , selecting the Cooper, let apart the PB potential, isn't bad at all for Zandy .
Zandvoort enhance the ability of the Cooper to accept sudden changes in lateral forces with an easy steering control. Rare are the tracks where this chassis shows "so" forgiving/efficiency driving with quite the Papyrus default setups.

Described like an Eagle underpowered for its handling,(Steve Smith, Jackseller) the Cooper is more at home here than the beautiful bird.

In the 67 season, for a long time during the race, with full tanks, Rindt and Rodriguez were able to follow Hill / Brabham fast motoring in front

All good advice from everyone before me. You could try the cooper at a different track for a while or another car at Zandy, sooner or later something will click. What clicked for me in all cars at Zandy was to go slower Someone here quoted someone the other day: "To go faster on the track, go slower in the cockpit", or words to that effect. As always, it comes down to exit speed and with the high speed turns of Zandy, traction is the key. If your sliding it heaps through the corners, you can't get the power down for that exit speed. Try doing a few laps, going as fast as you can without any tyre squeal at all. That will get you in to the right rythm and you can then build on that.

Nine times out of ten if someone says they're trying really hard but can't get any faster, it means they're trying too hard.

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Posted Jan 11 2012 - 09:28 AM

I've actually been playing GPL on and off since 2001 when someone introduced it to me at uni. Looks like I've entered into one of my 'on' periods and I'm enjoying it despite my recent moan! I'm not on GPLRank but I am aiming to go negative on all the default tracks with all the cars (hence the Cooper to the gentleman who asked why) so I've still got years of driving still to do. I used to use VROC regularly years ago but I haven't ventured there or IGOR for quite a while now.

The overall message appears to be step back a little, try a different car elsewhere and then come back to the Cooper later, this is actually something I learned very early on in my GPL career if you like. Sometimes I would leave a track alone for weeks and come back to with whatever car I was struggling around with and set some very quick times (by my standard!) with little effort. I would describe my pace as sort of midfield-ish.

I'm aware of replay analyser (but not the merge facility mentioned by someone! thanks for that). In fact, I have a large collection of GPL downloads I kept from the RSC days, more GPL addons than you can shake a stick at including some classic GPL movies too!

pribluda is something I've heard about but never used.

Ruud, I recall discussing the Honda at Zandvoort with you at RSC. You even promised me a drink if I went negative which I eventually did!

Mr. Needforspeed - The Cooper does have fantastic handling around Zandvoort like you said, beautifully balanced - cos it's slow! I recall finding the Eagle a bit of handful around Zandvoort although obviously it wasn't that difficult to go negative in it.

If I promised you a drink mate, that still stands, every negative deserves one - I'll still buy ya one if you gimme a call if you happen to be in the South of Holland..!

The Cooper is far from the worst car at Zandy indeed because that track is all about line line line (which you can try to stick to in any car). I had far more difficulty with the Honda since due to its heft it tries to slide off that line so much.

(But the Coop is a tool for masochists at tracks like Spa or Monza..! It just has no top speed. No matter how much I pleaded with Maserati to give their old engine an update, no one at the factory would listen )

Chris, a couple of months ago I came back to GPL after a 7-8 year lay-off. I think I'm enjoying it more now than I did before! (And I'm just coming up 55, so I'm no young spring chicken!). When I realised how much I was enjoying GPL again, I noticed from my ranks that I was still out on 4 HistoricRank tracks and 2 ChallengeRank tracks. I set about the HistoricRank ones, not really expecting to find that I could be as fast as I used to be (well short of alien, but respectably -33 on GPLRank), and on the first one Lime Rock Park, I nearly gave up. I couldn't get within 3 seconds of the time I set back in 03/04, which was itself a second shy of the benchmark. But I kept going. Concentrating on that track alone. Eventually I did it. The same pattern followed with Keimola, Imola and Pau - each one full of initial frustration but then something clicks and you wind up suddenly finding huge chunks of time. Having got HistoricRank all green I turned to ChallengeRank and - Bremgarten. I really did nearly give up when after a fortnight I could barely turn a 2.09. Then in two days I was within hundredths and a day later beat the benchmark by nearly half a second. My final nemesis is Solitude where I'm still 4 seconds short. 4 seconds!! But I know it will come. And the important thing is that I'm still having a real blast doing it! So persevere!

As to the quote - Pribluda is absolutely essential as it really gives you the momentum to keep going, especially when you see the combination of your best sector times well under the benchmark. When that point arrives, it's just a matter of time......

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Posted Mar 19 2012 - 02:50 PM

Chris Amon, on Jan 27 2012 - 07:47 PM, said:

Next, the BRM.

Finally got it done in the BRM! 1.26.4

Say what you like about the H16 but when it eventually gets going, it has quite a bit of horsepower. So, Zandvoort is the first track where I've gone negative in all the cars, in fact, I reckon if I started again, I could shave quite a bit off all my times given the long gaps between when some of the times were set for the other cars. The BRM time is faster than the Cooper and Ferrari times I managed earlier for instance!

Where next? I'm toying with the idea of Kyalami or maybe Rouen or even Spa. Decisions, decisions.

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Posted Mar 21 2012 - 04:12 AM

Rudy Dingemans, on Mar 20 2012 - 12:45 PM, said:

BRM?

Yep, the very same. It has become one of my favourite cars to drive along with the Cooper. I wouldn't mind racing in it (on low fuel) or even in a field of Coopers and Hondas only.

I dug out an old VHS tape about motor racing history in the 1960s and watched it earlier this week, the late Tony Rudd was in it saying the H16 was one of his biggest mistakes. It certainly had the ponies when it got going, problem was it took it a while to get going!

Yeah, I like the BRM too, it has character. As long as you keep the rear end in line (strictly! - I once lost an online race on the verge of winning in the BRM and lost the rear in the final corner even when being careful) it's fairly ok, its chassis is not even too bad.
Power it had, too, it's just too heavy for its own good; and it shows, engine is pretty massive (I've stood next to the real car in the Donington museum - religious experience for us GPL fans, that )

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Posted Aug 22 2013 - 03:11 AM

Rudy Dingemans, on Jan 11 2012 - 04:24 PM, said:

If I promised you a drink mate, that still stands, every negative deserves one - I'll still buy ya one if you gimme a call if you happen to be in the South of Holland..!

The Cooper is far from the worst car at Zandy indeed because that track is all about line line line (which you can try to stick to in any car). I had far more difficulty with the Honda since due to its heft it tries to slide off that line so much.

(But the Coop is a tool for masochists at tracks like Spa or Monza..! It just has no top speed. No matter how much I pleaded with Maserati to give their old engine an update, no one at the factory would listen )